Food Statistics in 2026: Hunger, Food Security, Spending, and Waste

Food statistics at a glance

Food statistics tell two stories at once: the world produces enough to reach more than 3,000 kilocalories per person per day, yet hunger, food insecurity, and diet-related excess remain widespread. The gap between availability and access is the core pattern running through the data.

Fast facts

In 2023, around 733 million people faced hunger globally and 2.33 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure (FAO SOFI 2024).
In 2023, 864 million people were severely food insecure and more than 2.8 billion people could not afford a healthy diet (FAO SOFI 2024).
In 2023, 900 million adults lived with obesity, while 2.5 billion adults were overweight and 1.4 billion adults were obese (WHO/FAO SOFI 2024).
In 2024, 13.7 percent of U.S. households were food insecure and 5.4 percent experienced very low food security (USDA ERS Household Food Security in the United States in 2024).
In 2024, U.S. food expenditures reached $2.63 trillion, with food-away-from-home accounting for 58.5 percent of that total (USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending).
In the United States, over one-third of all available food goes uneaten through loss or waste (USDA Food Loss and Waste).

Global food statistics
Food insecurity and hunger
Obesity and diet quality
Food supply, trade, and production
U.S. food spending and household budgets
Food loss and waste
What the numbers suggest

Global food statistics

The most important food statistics are not just about supply. They show how food systems can be abundant in aggregate while still leaving hundreds of millions hungry and billions unable to afford a healthy diet (FAO SOFI 2024).

At a glance

Metric	Value	Source
People facing hunger in 2023	733 million	FAO SOFI 2024
Moderately or severely food insecure in 2023	2.33 billion	FAO SOFI 2024
Severely food insecure in 2023	864 million	FAO SOFI 2024
Adults living with obesity in 2023	900 million	WHO/FAO SOFI 2024
Adults overweight in 2023	2.5 billion	WHO/FAO SOFI 2024
Adults obese in 2023	1.4 billion	WHO/FAO SOFI 2024
Children under 5 overweight in 2023	37.0 million	WHO/FAO SOFI 2024
Children under 5 stunted in 2023	148.1 million	WHO/FAO SOFI 2024
Children under 5 wasted in 2023	45.0 million	WHO/FAO SOFI 2024
People unable to afford a healthy diet in 2024	More than 2.8 billion	FAO SOFI 2024

The table makes the central contradiction hard to miss: food systems are producing enough energy overall, but the burden is distributed unevenly. Hunger, affordability, and poor nutrition are happening at scale at the same time.

The scale of the access problem

733 million people facing hunger in 2023 is already a severe headline number, but it sits inside a larger access problem. The same year, 2.33 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure and 864 million were severely food insecure (FAO SOFI 2024).

That means food insecurity is not limited to the most extreme cases. It stretches into a much wider zone where people may have to reduce quality, skip meals, or live with uncertainty about the next meal. The data show a broad access gap, not a niche hardship.

A second access signal is affordability. In 2024, more than 2.8 billion people could not afford a healthy diet (FAO SOFI 2024). That is a separate warning from hunger counts: having food available is not the same as being able to buy or assemble a nutritious diet.

Why the global nutrition picture looks mixed

The nutrition data point in two directions at once. On one side, 900 million adults lived with obesity in 2023, while 2.5 billion adults were overweight and 1.4 billion were obese (WHO/FAO SOFI 2024). On the other side, 148.1 million children under 5 were stunted and 45.0 million were wasted in the same year (WHO/FAO SOFI 2024).

That combination matters because it shows the global food challenge is not only undernutrition. It also includes excess intake, poor diet quality, and inconsistent access to nutritious foods across age groups.

Key takeaway: the food system is delivering too little to some people and too much of the wrong balance to others, often in the same year and sometimes in the same country.

Food insecurity and hunger

Food insecurity statistics are among the clearest indicators of stress in a food system. They show how many households cannot reliably count on enough food, enough quality, or enough consistency.

Global hunger and severity levels

The 2023 estimates from FAO SOFI 2024 create a useful ladder of severity:

733 million people faced hunger globally.
2.33 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure.
864 million people were severely food insecure.
More than 2.8 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2024.

Read together, these figures show a widening funnel. Hunger is the most severe visible endpoint, but much larger numbers sit upstream in milder or moderate insecurity.

U.S. household food security in 2024

The U.S. data show the same pattern of strain, just at household scale.

86.3 percent of U.S. households were food secure throughout the entire year (USDA ERS Household Food Security in the United States in 2024).
13.7 percent were food insecure at least some time during the year (USDA ERS Household Food Security in the United States in 2024).
5.4 percent experienced very low food security (USDA ERS Household Food Security in the United States in 2024).
The 2024 prevalence of food insecurity was 13.7 percent, statistically not different from 13.5 percent in 2023 (USDA ERS Household Food Security in the United States in 2024).
The 2024 prevalence of very low food security was 5.4 percent, statistically not different from 5.1 percent in 2023 (USDA ERS Household Food Security in the United States in 2024).

A useful way to read these numbers is stability, not improvement. Food insecurity did not drop materially from 2023 to 2024, and very low food security remained present at a meaningful level.

What the household counts imply

The percentages become even more striking when translated into household counts:

18.3 million U.S. households were food insecure in 2024 (USDA ERS Food Security and Nutrition Assistance charting the essentials).
7.2 million U.S. households experienced very low food security in 2024 (USDA ERS Food Security and Nutrition Assistance charting the essentials).
The 2024 USDA food security report found 0.9 percent of households with children experienced very low food security for children (USDA ERS Household Food Security in the United States in 2024).

These figures show that child-related food hardship exists even when the national economy is operating around familiar levels of consumption and spending.

Food assistance in context

One of the strongest contextual clues in the U.S. data is that about 1 in 4 people in the United States participates in at least one federal food or nutrition assistance program over a typical year (USDA ERS Food Security and Nutrition Assistance charting the essentials).

That is a reminder that food insecurity is not a marginal policy issue. It touches a large share of the population through the assistance system, even in a high-income country.

Obesity and diet quality

Food statistics should not be read only through shortage. Many of the same systems that leave people hungry also make calorie-dense diets easier to access than nutrient-dense ones.

Adult obesity and overweight counts

The 2023 global figures are large enough to be startling on their own:

2.5 billion adults were overweight (WHO/FAO SOFI 2024).
1.4 billion adults were obese (WHO/FAO SOFI 2024).
900 million adults lived with obesity (WHO/FAO SOFI 2024).

The overlap between overweight and obesity is important for interpreting the data, but the overall signal is clear: excessive body weight is now a major worldwide food and health issue, not just a wealthy-country issue.

U.S. obesity patterns by age

The CDC age split gives a concise view of how common obesity is across adulthood:

Age group	Obesity prevalence	Source
Adults aged 20 to 39	39.8%	CDC Adult Obesity Facts
Adults aged 40 to 59	44.3%	CDC Adult Obesity Facts
Adults aged 60 and older	41.5%	CDC Adult Obesity Facts

A few points stand out:

The highest prevalence in this set is among adults aged 40 to 59 at 44.3 percent (CDC Adult Obesity Facts).
Adults aged 60 and older are not far behind at 41.5 percent (CDC Adult Obesity Facts).
Even the lowest group here, adults aged 20 to 39, still has a prevalence near 4 in 10 (CDC Adult Obesity Facts).

Broad U.S. adult burden

The broader CDC estimate reinforces the scale of the problem:

In 2017-March 2020, U.S. adult obesity prevalence was 41.9 percent and severe obesity prevalence was 9.2 percent (CDC Adult Obesity Facts).
In the same period, more than 100 million U.S. adults had obesity (CDC Adult Obesity Facts).
More than 22 million U.S. adults had severe obesity (CDC Adult Obesity Facts).

The severe obesity figure matters because it signals a higher-risk subgroup inside an already large obesity population.

Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption

Diet quality statistics often become clearer when you look at a single high-sugar behavior.

In 2011-2014, 49 percent of U.S. adults drank a sugar-sweetened beverage on a given day (CDC Fast Facts: Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption).
In 2011-2014, U.S. adults consumed an average of 145 calories from sugar-sweetened beverages on a given day (CDC Fast Facts: Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption).
In 2011-2014, 63 percent of U.S. youth drank a sugar-sweetened beverage on a given day (CDC Fast Facts: Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption).
In 2011-2014, U.S. youth consumed an average of 413 calories from sugar-sweetened beverages on a given day (CDC Fast Facts: Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption).
Among U.S. children aged 1 to 5 years, 57.1 percent reported consuming at least one sugar-sweetened beverage in the previous 7 days (CDC Fast Facts: Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption).

The youth numbers are especially notable because they show how early beverage habits can become normalized.

Food supply, trade, and production

Food supply statistics help explain why abundance and scarcity can coexist. The system is large, global, and highly traded, which means supply is rarely the only issue.

Supply levels and regional patterns

In 2023, the global per capita dietary energy supply crossed 3,000 kilocalories per day (FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023).

That figure is a useful benchmark because it shows the world food system, in the aggregate, is not short on calories. Yet the earlier hunger and insecurity data show that aggregate availability does not guarantee access or dietary adequacy.

From the same FAO release, several regional patterns matter:

Europe, the Americas, and Oceania maintained higher food supply than the world average in 2023 (FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023).
Asia recorded the fastest increase in dietary energy supply from 2010 to 2023 (FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023).
Between 2010 and 2023, global food supply increased by 5 percent in the earlier FAO release period through 2021 and kept rising to above 3,000 kcal in 2023 (FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023; FAO food balance sheets 2010-2021).

Trade exposure by product

The export shares show how international the food system is for many commodities.

Product group	Export share in 2023	Source
Vegetable oil	46%	FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023
Fish and seafood	34%	FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023
Sugars and sweeteners	34%	FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023
Pulses	26%	FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023
Cereals	20%	FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023

A few takeaways are worth keeping in mind:

Vegetable oil is especially trade-exposed at 46 percent exported (FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023).
Fish and seafood, sugars and sweeteners, and pulses are all materially international products.
Even cereals, the core staple category, had 20 percent exported in 2023 (FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023).

Coverage and dataset breadth

The FAO food balance sheet release covered 178 countries and 449 primary and derived products (FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023).

That breadth matters because it shows the underlying statistics are not narrow or anecdotal. They are meant to describe a global food system with enough coverage to reveal structural trends rather than isolated cases.

U.S. food spending and household budgets

Food spending data show how households experience food in the real economy: what they buy, where they buy it, and how much of income goes there.

Spending totals in 2024

The headline number is large:

Nominal U.S. food expenditures reached $2.63 trillion in 2024 (USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending).
Food-away-from-home spending reached $1.54 trillion (USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending).
Food-at-home spending reached $1.09 trillion (USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending).
Food-away-from-home accounted for 58.5 percent of total U.S. food expenditures (USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending).

That split is important. It shows that in 2024, the majority of food dollars went to eating away from home, not just grocery spending.

The same report shows food still takes a meaningful share of disposable income:

Total food spending was 10.6 percent of disposable personal income in 2024 (USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending).
Food at home was 5.0 percent (USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending).
Food away from home was 5.6 percent (USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending).

That near-even split between at-home and away-from-home share is notable because the dollar totals are not evenly balanced in the same way as the budget share.

Spending by income group

Income level changes both food spending and the burden that food places on a household budget.

Income quintile	Average food spending in 2023	Share of after-tax income	Source
Lowest income quintile	$5,278	32.6%	USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending
Middle income quintile	$8,989	13.5%	USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending
Highest income quintile	$16,996	8.1%	USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending

This table captures one of the clearest inequalities in the data.

Higher-income households spend more dollars on food.
Lower-income households spend a much larger share of income on food.
The lowest quintile devoted 32.6 percent of after-tax income to food spending, compared with 8.1 percent for the highest quintile (USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending).

That gap helps explain why food price changes feel more painful at lower incomes.

Food loss and waste

Food waste is one of the biggest inefficiencies in the whole system because it sits at the intersection of environmental loss, economic loss, and access loss.

The U.S. waste picture

The USDA figures are blunt:

Over one-third of all available food goes uneaten through loss or waste in the United States (USDA Food Loss and Waste).
U.S. food waste is estimated at 30 to 40 percent of the food supply (USDA Food Loss and Waste).
USDA estimates 31 percent food loss at the retail and consumer levels in the United States (USDA Food Loss and Waste).
That 31 percent food loss amounted to about 133 billion pounds of food in 2010 (USDA Food Loss and Waste).
That 31 percent food loss was worth about $161 billion in 2010 (USDA Food Loss and Waste).
The average American family of four loses $1,500 each year to uneaten food (USDA Food Loss and Waste).

Why waste belongs in any food statistics discussion

Food waste is not a side issue. It reduces the effective value of everything upstream in the supply chain. When a large share of available food is lost or discarded, the food system must produce, transport, refrigerate, and finance more output than people actually consume.

It also changes the meaning of shortages. A system can look large enough in aggregate while still producing a lot of avoidable waste and leaving many people unable to access a healthy diet.

What the numbers suggest

The combined food statistics point to four durable patterns:

Availability is not the same as access. The world can exceed 3,000 kilocalories per person per day and still leave 733 million people hungry (FAO food balance sheets 2010-2023; FAO SOFI 2024).
Affordability is a binding constraint. More than 2.8 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in 2024 (FAO SOFI 2024).
Underconsumption and overconsumption coexist. Hundreds of millions face hunger while 900 million adults live with obesity and 2.5 billion adults are overweight (WHO/FAO SOFI 2024).
Household budgets remain exposed. In the United States, food took 10.6 percent of disposable personal income in 2024, and lower-income households spent 32.6 percent of after-tax income on food in 2023 (USDA ERS Food Prices and Spending).

The strongest reading of the data is not that food is scarce everywhere. It is that the food system is uneven, costly, trade-dependent, and leaky, with major gaps between production, diet quality, affordability, and actual consumption.